The Waste Land and Other Poems (Penguin Classics)

Staff Pick

Many things happen in "The Waste Land"; a woman tends her hair  it may well be her last mystery  so that it does (like grass left unmolested, perhaps) sing; chess is played in the closest of circumstances... wait, does any of that make sense? Probably not. T. S. Eliot's great poem (or shocking moment in history  you choose) "The Waste Land" is something that you must read for yourself. Lapping at it after it's been filtered through another does tap at the ruin that is the heart of the text, true, but you'll only suffer for it. Read it for yourself and gasp; I did. Recommended by Gin, Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

While recovering from a mental collapse in a Swiss sanitarium in 1921, T. S. Eliot finished what became the definitive poem of the modern condition, one that still casts a large and ominous shadow over twentieth-century poetry. Built upon the imagery of the Grail legend, the Fisher King, and ancient fertility cults, The Waste Land” is both a poetic diagnosis of an ailing civilization and a desperate quest for spiritual renewal. Through pastiche and collage Eliot unfolds a nightmarish landscape of sexual disorder and spiritual desolation, inhabited by the voice (literary, historical, mythic, contemporary) of an unconscious that is at turns deeply personal and culturally collective. This edition includes The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Portrait of a Lady,” Gerontion,” and more.

Synopsis:

This collection of Eliot's first three volumes of verse includes "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, " "Portrait of a Lady, " "Gerontion, " and others. T.S. Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.

About the Author

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and spent many of his adult years in England. He worked for a bank while writing poetry, teaching, and reviewing, and was soon recognized as a force in the British literary world. The Waste Land confirmed his reputation as an innovative poet.

Frank Kermode is among our greatest contemporary critics. He has written and edited many works, among them The Sense of Ending and Shakespeares Language.

Many things happen in "The Waste Land"; a woman tends her hair  it may well be her last mystery  so that it does (like grass left unmolested, perhaps) sing; chess is played in the closest of circumstances... wait, does any of that make sense? Probably not. T. S. Eliot's great poem (or shocking moment in history  you choose) "The Waste Land" is something that you must read for yourself. Lapping at it after it's been filtered through another does tap at the ruin that is the heart of the text, true, but you'll only suffer for it. Read it for yourself and gasp; I did.

by Gin

"Synopsis"
by Libri,
This collection of Eliot's first three volumes of verse includes "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, " "Portrait of a Lady, " "Gerontion, " and others. T.S. Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.

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